Hospital-Acquired Legionnaires Disease at a North Georgia Hospital - Georgia, October 2025
- Presentation Day/Time: Thursday, April 23, 9:05 AM
- Presenter: Andrea Bessler, DVM, MPH, DACVPM, Georgia Department of Public Health
The Issue
- On October 3, 2025, the Georgia Department of Public Health identified two cases of Legionnaires' disease (LD) in patients recently admitted to a local hospital. LD causes severe pneumonia and is typically acquired by inhaling contaminated aerosolized water from building plumbing systems or cooling towers.
What We Did
- We investigated to characterize cases and identify the outbreak extent and source.
What We Found
- We identified four cases related to the outbreak, most among older males who had other health problems. Water sampling found multiple patient-care areas with inadequate circulating hot and cold water temperatures, and cooling tower maintenance records revealed infrequent semiannual cleaning and Legionella water cultures. Building records revealed ongoing construction activities on the hospital campus and one cooling tower culture grew Legionella pneumophila before remediation.
What This Means
- Although a definitive outbreak source was not identified, inadequate cooling tower maintenance during construction and insufficient circulating potable water temperatures might have contributed to the outbreak.
